Health Care Reform in the Other Washington

Like Washington, D.C., in Washington State the executive branch (Governor) and both houses of the legislature are firmly in Democrat hands. The similarity does not end there. Take health care reform as an example. House Republicans have proposed "10 Solutions for a Healthier Washington" and introduced eight implementing bills in the 2009 regular session of the Washington State House of Representatives but no action was taken other than refer them to committee. The same bills were carried forward to the 2010 special session and remain in the Health and Wellness Committee, chaired by Representative Eileen Cody (D-34th District), where they still have not received a public hearing. A minority party may have good ideas but the public will never be able to consider them if they are buried in committee.

The history and status of the below listed House Bills may be tracked on the Washington State House of Representatives web site.

HB 1865 - Exempts health plans offered to small employers from certain statutory requirements.

HB 1866 - Establishes parameters for carriers to design health plans for adults between the ages of nineteen and thirty-four.

HB 1867 - Abolishes the certificate of need process established in chapter 70.38 RCW.Directs the code reviser, by November 15, 2009, to recommend to the legislature appropriate legislation that effectuates the purposes of the act by removing references to the certificate of need process in sections of the Revised Code of Washington not repealed by the act.

HB 1868 - Modifies provisions regarding access to health insurance for small employers and their employees.

HB 1870 - Authorizes employees, as defined in RCW 41.05.011, to receive the monthly value of their health care benefit in a pretax account for the purchase of a core benefit plan from a private vendor.

HB 1871 - Regulates health insurance coverage provided by out-of-state health carriers.

HB 1872 - Provides tax incentives for the purchase of health care plans by a person conducting business as a sole proprietorship and small employers.

HB 2169 - Authorizes the Washington basic health plan administrator to provide an enrollee a stipend sufficient to provide the same level of subsidy as would have otherwise been available through the basic health plan for enrollees who wish to purchase coverage through the individual health insurance market, including a high deductible health plan in conjunction with a health savings account

Source:soundpolitics.com/

Diagnoses vary in Washington, D.C., on status of health care reform

While no one is ready to declare that health reform initiatives being weighed by Congress are dead, Democrats and Republicans have very differing views of the condition of one final piece of comprehensive legislation.

Members of the White House took to the television airwaves Sunday (Jan. 24) to defend the months of work by both members of the Senate and House and continue to champion the need for health care reform, despite last week’s election of Scott Brown as the Republican successor to the Massachusetts Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy.

Valerie Jarrett, a White House advisor, told NBC’s Meet the Press that Brown’s election, and the end of a filibuster-proof Senate, does not spell the end for reform efforts.

Jarrett said President Barack Obama will continue to “fight for the American people” and that the same climate that spurred reform – escalating costs and premiums and loss of coverage due to pre-existing conditions – remain.

“[The president is] going to fight for trying to get as absolutely as much as he can to reduce the cost of health care, to provide insurance, provide security and safety for those folks who have insurance now, all of the core principles that we set forth at the very beginning of the process; core principles, I might add, that were included in both the bill that was passed by the Senate and the bill that was passed by the House,” she said.

White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod shared a similar message on ABC’s “This Week,” indicating that a recent Washington Post poll on Brown’s win indicates that the majority of people still want health care reform.

“They want us to address their concerns with the program, and they want Brown to come and work with us and not be obstructionist,” he said. “That was very clear in the polling.”

Axelrod added that “the foolish thing to do would be for anybody else who supported this to walk away from it, because what’s happened is, this thing’s been defined by insurance company – insurance industry propaganda, the propaganda of the opponents, and an admittedly messy process leading up to it…But the underlying elements of it are popular and important.”

The need to ‘start over’
While the White House seeks to press on, Republicans want to restart the whole reform effort from the beginning.

Mitch McConnell
On “Meet the Press,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said the message in Massachusetts was “absolutely” clear.

“What we really need to do is start over,” McConnell, of Kentucky, said. “The American people had a victory in Massachusetts, and they were sending us the message ‘stop and start over.’”

McConnell added that there is not one Republican who would vote for any Democratic health care reform initiative that currently exists.

“Well, this comprehensive bill? Of course not. You know, the American people are overwhelmingly opposed to it,” he said, hesitant to deem the current bills as “dead.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who last year compared stopping Obama’s reform efforts to “his Waterloo,” told “This Week” that what happened in Massachusetts last week was part of “an American awakening.”

“The Republicans want to work with the Democrats on improving health care, focusing on jobs,” he said. “There are a number of other priorities. But for this first year, the president really believed that he could steamroll the Republicans, not even have us in the same room, and in the process, he was steamrolling the American people, not listening to what they were saying.”

DeMint added that “hopefully, the president will stop this effort to take over our health care system,” and refocus his efforts on jobs and the economy.
Source:ifawebnews.com/

EMT illegally removed from job, D.C. court rules

The D.C. Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that an emergency medical technician who improperly took a city man with a serious head wound to a hospital near her home out of convenience was illegally removed from her job because District officials had missed a 90-day deadline to fire her.

The court ruled that D.C. officials had an obligation to fire Selena Walker in a timely manner after the January 2006 incident involving David E. Rosenbaum, a New York Times reporter who was attacked near his Chevy Chase home.

Rosenbaum was initially assessed as being intoxicated and a low-priority case, and Walker opted to drive him to Howard University Hospital instead of Sibley Memorial Hospital, which was closer. A team member said Walker made the decision because she wanted to take care of personal business afterward.

It was discovered at the hospital that Rosenbaum had a critical head wound and that important time had been lost in caring for him. He died two days later. Walker's job had been protected in an administrative decision that the city's Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department appealed.


Source:washingtonpost.com/

C-SPAN trying for camera access on healthcare

Remember when candidate Barack Obama promised in 2008 that the healthcare reform debate would be held in full view of the "C-SPAN cameras" as part of his pledge of a new transparency in government?

It hasn't exactly happened that way, has it? And now, with Democratic leadership in the Senate and House promising to take the process of reconciling the the two bills into even deeper darkness, C-SPAN has released a letter from CEO Brian Lamb showing that it isn't cable TV's fault that Americans are being kept from bearing witness to the creation of one of the most sweeping pieces of legislation in four decades.

Here's a letter Lamb sent to Democratic leadership promising any and all C-SPAN resources to telecast negotiations on the final healthcare bill. Read it and understand who is cutting the American public out of this process. I have been writing for months about the outstanding job C-SPAN has been doing in trying to take viewers behind the closed doors of this process -- despite the efforts of Democratic leadership to keep the cameras at bay.

Here's the letter dated Dec. 30, 2009. After reading it, please let me know how it makes you feel.



The Honorable Nancy Pelosi The Honorable Harry Reid

Speaker Majority Leader

United States House or Representatives United States Senate



The Honorable John Boehner The Honorable Mitch McConnell

Minority Leader Minority Leader

United States House of Representatives United States Senate



Dear Speaker Pelosi:

Representative Boehner:

Senator Reid:

Senator McConnell:



As your respective chambers work to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate health care bills, C-SPAN requests that you open all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings, to electronic media coverage.



The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of these sessions LIVE and in their entirety. We will also, as we willingly do each day, provide C-SPAN’s multi-camera coverage to any interested member of the Capitol Hill broadcast pool.



Since the initial introduction of the America’s Affordable Health Care Act of 2009 in the House and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the Senate

C-SPAN has televised literally hundreds of hours of committee hearings, mark ups and floor debate on these bills for the public to see. And importantly, we have archived all of this video for future generations to study in the C-SPAN Video Archives.



President Obama, Senate and House leaders, many of your rank-and-file members, and the nation’s editorial pages have all talked about the value of transparent discussions on reforming the nation’s health care system. Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation between the Chambers, we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American.



We hope you will give serious consideration to this request. We are most willing to employ the latest digital technology to make the cameras, lights and microphones as unobtrusive as possible.



Please contact me if I can answer any questions.

Source:baltimoresun.com/

White House marshals resources to complete health reform

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The fate of healthcare reform lies in the hands of the U.S. Congress, but the White House will use every weapon it has to steer its top policy priority through the legislature and into law.

Healthcare Reform

President Barack Obama and aides will make the public case for reform in speeches, interviews and blog posts in the weeks ahead.

"I'll be rolling up my sleeves and spending some time before the full Congress even gets into session, because the American people need it now," Obama said in an interview with PBS' "Newshour" that aired on December 23.

But they will also work behind the scenes to push Democrats to get over any objections and back a plan resembling the one passed by the U.S. Senate.

"The White House has some serious human assets to deploy, not only a skilled and experienced legislative relations staff, but also a chief of staff who understands the way the Hill works and is pretty good at the carrots and sticks game," said William Galston, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton now at the Brookings Institution.

Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was a veteran of the Clinton White House who became a power player in the House of Representatives and is considered a master of the art of cutting back-room deals.

"The White House has been preparing for this end game for a long time," Galston said.

After passing their own versions of the sweeping push to overhaul the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare industry, the House and Senate must now merge them into a single bill, which each has to pass before sending it to Obama.

Obama and his fellow Democrats have trumpeted progress on the healthcare overhaul as a major achievement, but they must resolve significant differences between the House and Senate bills and, after months of wrangling, do it quickly.

"We're like 90 percent there. We're really close," said David Kendall of Third Way, a centrist Washington think tank that supports the healthcare bill. "The differences that remain are significant, but they're not overwhelming."

HOW TO PAY FOR IT

The biggest difference between the House and Senate bills is how they are financed, and analysts said that disparity could be the highest hurdle for congressional negotiators.

The House would impose a 5.4 percent surtax on high-income Americans. The Senate has a 40-percent excise tax on high-cost "Cadillac" insurance plans, strongly opposed by labor unions typically among the Democrats' strongest supporters.

Kendall said House and Senate differences over how to pay for reform could be overcome by doing more to control costs in the final bill and exempting some Cadillac insurance plans for union members doing high-risk jobs.

The White House says negotiations will not force the House to accept all of the Senate Democrats' plan. "There are elements of it (the House bill) that we definitely like," one administration official said.

Democrats want to deliver a major legislative victory for Obama and sell the public on what they believe are the benefits of reform, well before they fight to preserve their majorities in the House and Senate in November elections.

"A lot of Democrats are running scared right now, they're looking for help and they are looking for a safety net and the White House is in a position to provide both," Galston said.

The administration is determined not to be sidetracked by security concerns after the botched December 25 airliner bombing and efforts to cut high unemployment.

"When you're president of the United States you've got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time," deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton told reporters.

Obama was meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday with House Democratic leaders, and leaders of the Democrats in the Senate were to participate by teleconference.

With Republicans staunchly opposed to the reform plans -- only one House Republican backed its bill and no Senate Republicans voted in favor -- the final measure is likely to be negotiated among Democratic leaders and the White House.

They are likely to skip a formal House-Senate conference that would include Republicans who could use the process to slow down the bill.

That plan has been criticized as contravening Obama's promises to run an open government and include Republicans in the process, but Democrats contend that skipping formal conferences has become common practice on Capitol Hill.

Source:reuters.com/

Holiday horror after woman struck by car

TRAGEDY: Members of the Blenheim Volunteer Fire Brigade cover the scene where 68-year-old Deborah Howell (inset) was fatally hit by a car.







The husband of a leading United States journalist killed while holidaying in Marlborough says his wife always told him to face reporters if anything happened to her.

Former Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell, 68, a veteran newspaper editor, was fatally injured when she was struck by a car on Rapaura Rd, near Spring Creek, north of Blenheim, about 12.10pm Saturday.

She had stepped out of the car she was in to take a photograph when she was hit by an oncoming vehicle. Her husband, Peter Magrath, said he believed she was not used to cars driving on the left, and had looked the wrong way.

Sergeant Dan Mattison, of Blenheim, said Ms Howell was taken to Wairau Hospital by Blenheim St John Ambulance with serious injuries. She died soon after.

Mr Magrath, a former University of Minnesota president, agreed to talk to The Marlborough Express, because his wife always told him to face reporters.

"You don't have to answer questions, but I would dishonour her if I didn't talk to reporters," Mr Magrath said.

Ms Howell led two newspapers to three Pulitzer prizes.

According to the Pioneer Press, Ms Howell spent 14 years at the Minneapolis Star as a reporter and editor. She joined the Pioneer Press in 1979 as assistant managing editor. She became managing editor in 1982, executive editor in 1984 and editor in 1987.

She left the paper in 1990 to become chief of the Washington bureau for the Newhouse newspaper group and editor of Newhouse News Service, before she was named ombudsman, or reader representative, of the Washington Post, a position she held until 2008.

Mr Magrath said his wife worried very much about what effect new media would have on newspapers.

"She wanted [newspapers] to continue to be strong for democracy and information."

Mr Magrath said the couple, from Washington, DC, arrived in Wellington on December 30 from Sydney. They travelled to Blenheim on the Interislander ferry on Saturday, and intended to spend more than two weeks in the South Island, travelling to Christchurch, Franz Joseph, Wanaka and Queenstown.

"We came because we wanted to be in the mountains and we wanted to see New Zealand."

Mr Magrath said the couple were being transferred to accommodation by Marlborough Travel when his wife asked the driver to stop, because she wanted to take a photograph on Rapaura Rd.

Ad Feedback "She got out of the car. I think she looked the wrong way – right instead of left.

"I didn't see it happen, but all of a sudden I knew."

Mr Magrath said New Zealanders were "good people and nice people, but I'm finding that in a way I didn't want to find out.

"Everyone is being compassionate and helpful. I have nothing but appreciation for the people here."

He said he had "lost the love of my life".

"I lost my lifetime girlfriend, my wife, my companion.

"I wish it was a nightmare, because you can wake up from nightmares."

He said his wife of more than 21 years was one of the United States' leading women journalists and was – "tough and good and not a self-promoter".





DISBELIEF: Deborah Howell's husband, Peter Magrath, a former University of Minnesota president, has lost the love of his life.

Source:stuff.co.nz/

Pingree comments on Senate health reform bill

Healthy Fat Senator
WASHINGTON, D.C. (NEWS CENTER) - Rep. Pingree calls the Senate passage of a health reform bill "an early Christmas present."

The Senate passed their version of a health reform bill around 7:20 on Thursday morning. Both Maine Senators voted against the legislation.

The House of Representatives had passed another version of the bill in early November.

The next step is to reconcile the differences between the bills. The House bill, for instance, includes a public option while the Senate bill does not.

Maine's First District Representative, Chellie Pingree (D), issued this statement Thursday morning:

"The vote by the Senate today is like an early Christmas present. It puts us one step closer to real, significant health care reform. Although I still believe in the need for a public option like the one in the bill we passed in the House, both bills will rein in costs, improve coverage for those who already have it and put health care within reach for millions of individuals and small business who currently can't afford it."

"There is still much work to be done to reconcile the bill the Senate passed today with the House version, but I am confident we can work out the differences and I look forward taking a final vote on health care reform early next year."

Source:wcsh6.com/

Obama Disapproval Jumps after Furtive Senate Health Vote

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 23, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Rasmussen Reports' Daily Presidential Tracking Poll has showed a spike in disapproval of President Obama's job performance following Monday's 1 am cloture vote on the Senate health care bill.

On Wednesday 44% of voters said they "strongly disapprove" of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President, while 26% say they "strongly approve," giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -18. On Tuesday, the divide was 46%-25%, giving an index of -21 - the highest strong disapproval and lowest index yet recorded for the President.

55% at least somewhat disapproved of Obama's job performance, the same percentage that disapproved of the health care bill Democrats are currently pushing through the Senate.

In addition, only 29% of U.S. voters now say the country is heading in the right direction, the lowest level measured since early February, according to Rasmussen. 65% believe America is "heading down the wrong track."

Source:lifesitenews.com/

Senate Republicans fight health care reform

WASHINGTON D.C. -- As Senate Democrats prepare for what's expected to be a health care victory Thursday morning, Republicans today took one last shot a defeating the legislation.

They argued that the bill will increase health care costs for Americans as insurance companies off load the new fees contained in the $871 billion plan.

Missouri's Kit Bond, who chairs a subcommittee on small business, said the democrat's bill will kill job creation by imposing limits on the number of people small businesses can employ and the wages they pay to qualify for health care tax credits.

"The majority party doesn't want Americans to know they're getting a lump of coal for Christmas,” Bond said. “This is Chicago-style politics at its worst, a 2,700 page backroom deal, written behind closed doors, full of political pay offs, vampire votes in the dead of night, all to pass a health care bill before Christmas.”

President Obama told the Washington Post the Bill accomplishes 95 percent of what he wanted.

Source:connectmidmissouri.com/

Health care bill snowed in by political shenanigans in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON - With a snowstorm descending on Washington Friday, Capitol Hill was already gridlocked by a blizzard of stunts, insults and obstruction as Democrats struggled to pass a health reform bill.

Republicans started the day early in the morning attempting to filibuster a war-funding plan as a way to delay moving to health care, prompting cries of outrage.

"They are threatening to turn their backs on America's troops at wartime," said Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). "Rarely have I seen such brazen irresponsibility."

Republicans accused Democrats of being rude, and criticized freshman Minnesota Sen. Al Franken for cutting off Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on the Senate floor when the renegade ex-Dem spoke past his allotted time. "That's how the comity in this body has deteriorated," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "We've got to stop this."

He and other Republicans accused the majority of trying to rush a process that began last spring. "Apparently it's all going to be sprung on us [Saturday] morning in the middle of a snowstorm," McCain added.

Democrats are desperate to pass the health overhaul by Christmas Eve, but they were still trying to win over their own conservative Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), and they were trying to keep rebelling liberals in line.

Source:nydailynews.com/

Democrats Make Stride in Healthcare Reform Marathon

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Democrats in Washington moved one step closer to passage of a massive health care reform measure on Saturday, November 21 when the U.S. Senate voted for cloture on the bill. This vote will now allow the legislative body to begin debate on the health care overhaul. The U.S. House passed its version of the bill earlier in the month.

While the cloture vote marked a sizable victory for democrats, more work remains to be done and the coalition they amassed for the cloture vote may already be unraveling.

The cloture vote required sixty senators to vote “yes” - exactly the number of senators aligned with the democrats who voted for this measure – but several senators signaled right after the vote that their support would be temporary unless the bill was changed before being brought to the floor for passage.

The potential problem facing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is that four of the senators who voted for cloture have threatened to withhold their support for the final bill if the so-called “public option,” which these senators and other critics fear would lead to government run health care, is included. Additionally, there are at least two democratic senators who have asserted that they will not vote for any bill in which the “public option” is not included making it difficult for Reid to just remove the “public option” language.

With no Republicans currently offering their support of the bill, all this places Reid in a precarious position to get back to the magic number of sixty votes he would need to stop any filibuster that might be launched against the bill.

Reid does have the option to court some moderate Republicans like Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine who indicated she might support what is called a “trigger” on the “public option,” meaning that in the future if there is not enough competition among private insurance companies, the bill would “trigger” government involvement. But on the other side of the Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she is not open to the trigger option.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) speaking on the Today Show indicated that while Democrats would like to have some Republican support for the $848 billion measure, they will move forward without them. Saying, "We're not going to not pass a bill. The future of the country depends on getting something done, or the government will go broke, private businesses will go broke, and people will go broke paying for health care."

Even if Democrats do find a way to resolve their differences on "the public option," there will still remain disagreements within the party over health coverage for abortion and illegal immigrants which could prove even more difficult to resolve. Also standing between them and passage may be Independent Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut who has threatened to filibuster any bill that includes the “public option.”

As the debate rages on Capitol Hill, the American public seems to have made their decision on the bill. A new USA Today/Gallop poll indicates that the majority of Americans do not support the health care reform overhaul. The poll found that 42% of those polled oppose the bill and 35% are in favor of it. While Republicans and Democrats were unsurprisingly in opposition and in favor of the measure respectively, Independent voters were against the bill by a margin of 53% to 37%.

Also opposing the measure are many advocates for the business community and conservative organizations. One such opponent of the current measure is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the world's largest business federation representing more than 3 million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region.

While the Chamber has offered their support for health reform that controls skyrocketing health care costs, ends pre-existing condition exclusions and allows everyone to purchase health plans at a fair price, they find the bill in its current state to be a disappointment.

Bruce Josten, executive vice president of government affairs at the U.S. Chamber explained their problems with the bill saying, "This bill still contains a government-run health plan and an onerous employer mandate, it taxes working Americans, slashes Medicare, spends over a trillion dollars, and--after all this- the Congressional Budget Office tells us 24 million Americans will still not have health insurance."

Despite opposition both within and outside Washington, even if the Senate Democrats are able to retain the sixty votes needed to stop a filibuster and then pass their measure, much work will still remain to be done. After the Senate passes their version of the bill, the legislation then goes into conference wherein the House and Senate versions of the bill must be compromised and merged into one bill that must again be passed in both the U.S. House and the Senate before reaching the President’s desk.


Sourcelaspecula.com